Journey's End Raleigh Character Analysis

There are many ways of how the writer uses the character of Raleigh. Sherriff uses Raleigh as a way for some of the audience to relate to the character and as a way to emphasise the reality of death. Raleigh’s character is also used to represent all the keen, enthusiastic soldiers and he’s used to develop the other characters.
Sherriff uses Raleigh as a way for some of the audience to relate to the character. Raleigh is a new character and is introduced in the play early on. The author may be using Raleigh as a way to teach the audience things about war, through him. He goes through the play learning about war and the other characters. The audience learn a lot of things through him: they “play a bit of soccer when [they’re] out of the
Raleigh joined straight out of school when he was eighteen and after seeing Stanhope freshly promoted, he decided to sign up to the war. In order to capture the true essence of war, the author had to include men from different backgrounds, with different personalities and feelings. The different personalities make sure that Sheriff has got all the different aspects of war in; the young, high officer, the old experienced father-figure, the faker, and Raleigh – The new recruit. The fact that Raleigh has this type of personality means we can then contrast it to the other characters in the trench and how they react to war. For example if we contrast Raleigh with Osborne, we see that Osborne has been in the war for a long time and is well-accustomed to the war lifestyle, whereas Raleigh is completely the opposite, he’s new and inexperienced and this adds to the effect of their deaths. All these different personalities, including Raleigh’s, contribute to the way Sheriff makes the play feel so realistic and Raleigh is definitely an important character to
Stanhope knew Raleigh before the war and this provides background information about him Stanhope “was skipper of Rugger as Barford, and kept wicket for the eleven” he used to dislike drinking as he “caught some chaps in a study with a bottle of whisky” and “the roof nearly blew off” this shows that Stanhope has obviously changed from school to war, because of what the war has done to him. Raleigh says that Stanhope used to go out with her sister and “she is waiting for [him]”, this is information that gives the audience another view on Stanhope, a more vulnerable and scared captian, and material on him which the audience can then base our views on him on. Another side of Stanhope is seen towards the end. Throughout the play Stanhope is seen as a mean and harsh leader but at the end when Raleigh is dying his character becomes caring and concerned for Raleigh – something the audience hasn’t seen before. On page 101, Stanhope calls Raleigh by his first name for the first time he says “well Jimmy – you got one quickly”, this shows a certain level of affection as he had been refusing to throughout the book. We then see Raleigh slowly dying and throughout the rest of the scene, Stanhope is very caring and concerned towards Raleigh. An example of this would be when Raleigh asks for a light and Stanhope responds “Sure! I’ll bring a candle and get another blanket”, this shows he really did care for Raleigh. Raleigh also provides